Aspect - 58 percent of European organisations will have adopted a unified platform for multichannel communications by 2012 says survey

- Aspect UC-Trends survey reveals that 'improved employee productivity' and a 'mobile office' are among the benefits that organisations expect from unified communications -

Aspect have announced the results of a survey into European organisations' attitudes towards multichannel communications and the likely impact of Unified Communications (UC) on business performance.

The survey found that European organisations now use a wide variety of communications tools from E-mail to Mobile Devices, Traditional Voice (PSTN/PBX), Conferencing, VoIP, Instant Messaging (IM), Document Sharing, Presence and Video.

56% of organisations responding to the UC-Trends 2010 survey use 6 or more of these tools. Yet only 17% of European organisations have integrated them on a unified communications platform (with a further 38% stating they had 'partially integrated' them).

'Improved Employee Productivity' is seen by 22% of respondents as the main benefit of investing in a unified communications (UC) platform. 'Travel cost reduction' (12%), 'Mobile Office' (13%), and 'Saving Time and Resources using Presence (12%)' were other key benefits associated with UC. In economically-challenging times, these are all benefits that can hugely influence the bottom line, generating huge savings, improved productivity and greater efficiency.

And these were not the only benefits that individuals associated with UC. Respondents also recognised the huge impact that UC could have on service quality - with a massive 83% agreeing that the value of UC increases when it is extended to customers. 32% of individuals believe that UC will enable 'Cross Channel Communications', 18% say that it will 'Improve Response Rates by Connecting to Knowledge Agents Outside the Contact Centre' and 17% that it will enable 'Better Interaction with Field/Mobile Workers'.

Despite the relatively low level of investment in unified platforms for multichannel communications to date, the outlook for UC is very encouraging. 41% of survey respondents expect to deploy unified platforms within the next 2 years which, when added to the 17% that have already deployed, makes a total of 58% of European organisations that have deployed (or expect to deploy) by 2012. Leaving those that have failed to implement in the minority.

Commenting on the findings, Mark King, Senior VP Europe at Aspect said "While European organisations are increasingly supporting multichannel communications they're not doing so in a co-ordinated way - and this represents many lost opportunities to improve communications and business performance.

"For if investing in a unified platform for multichannel communications is perceived to improve 'individual productivity' and 'reduce travel costs' - and extending UC to customers improves multichannel communications and improves access to external knowledge workers - then conversely, the opposite must be true.

"By supporting multichannel communications WITHOUT investing in unified platforms then productivity isn't as high as it could be, travel costs are higher than they need to be, contact centre communications with external knowledge workers are not optimised, and so on. These are not only missed opportunities to impact the quality of internal and external company communications, they are also missed opportunities to improve business performance."

14th July 2010